


The World That Never Was

by The_Carnivorous_Muffin



Series: Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus [22]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Female Harry Potter, Friendship, Gen, Master of Death Harry Potter, Mystery, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-07-01 05:26:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15767520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Carnivorous_Muffin/pseuds/The_Carnivorous_Muffin
Summary: Thomas Evans and Harry Potter meet a red headed girl claiming to be an altered version of Harry Potter from a reality where a rabbit has devoured England. It leads to quite a few odd conversations.





	The World That Never Was

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory note that this is NOT CANON to either of the series.

“And so magic exists because reality is falling apart, and wizards designed spells so as to take advantage of that process. Eventually, in some indeterminate amount of time, the universe will implode and life, matter, the very fabric of time and space will cease to exist. Am I getting that right?”

 

Tom had thought that his life could not get more bizarre after he and Harry had started melding consciousness, of course that was after thinking life could not get more bizarre than finding himself trapped inside a diary for fifty years going slowly but surely mad, but it seemed that he’d once again have to set his bar a little higher.

Because he’d somehow met another Harry, or rather, another one of whatever Harry was.

 

Tom had assumed that Harry was some sort of magical aberration, that some unexplained, unknown thing, had made him the way that he was. It could have been triggered by the events on October 31, 1981 or it could have been the cause of the events on October 31, 1981 despite years of looking into the subject it remained unclear.

 

Tom only knew that Harry was more powerful than any human wizard, that magic to him was instinctual to the point that it was almost like moving, and that he was capable of great and terrible things if he so chose.

 

Tom had not realized that there were others.

 

The girl looked something like Harry, they had the same alarming eyes, that green that drew you in and held you, shifting shades and tones until it was like shadows and sunlight passing through the trees. They had similar faces but there were a few minor differences. This girl was thinner than Harry, leaner, managing to look compact rather than scrawny. Her hair shared Harry’s curls, but it was red, instead of the black he’d grown accustomed to.

 

She also looked as if she was a poor mimic of human expression and was trying to convey patience with a too wide and eager smile.

 

He’d run across her in Diagon Alley, or rather, they’d run across each other. Tom and Harry were out getting school supplies for the next year, which turned out to be a ridiculous amount of books by someone named Gilderoy Lockhart, and flipping through them Tom couldn’t help but think that it was possibly worse than the standard ministry textbook Quirrell had taught the year before.

 

Hogwarts had really gone downhill since 1945.

 

At any rate they were just leaving when he felt it, her. Her magic was like a pulsating star, blinding everyone who stumbled near it, until you were forced to stare and look at it and wonder how you weren’t going blind. It seemed she’d had the same reaction because she’d turned and stared, straight at Harry, and then at him, and her eyes refused to leave.

 

After standing for far too long in the middle of the street they’d all realized they looked ridiculous and decided to go eat at a nearby café and actually attempt to talk to one another.

 

It was there that the girl introduced herself as Lily and explained that something, somewhere, had just gone terribly wrong.

 

“You know, I think that’s the fastest I’ve ever seen anyone catch on to that. Usually there’s a lot more complaining involved, or you know, just not understanding.” The girl said as she took a sip of tea, her posture very polite and completely contrasting with her outfit.

 

She was wearing something that was very similar to what Harry had been forced to wear when he had lived with the Dursleys. A too large, second hand, nauseatingly colored sweater complete with frayed jean short beneath and beige sneakers that had probably once been white. She looked like she’d just walked out of a thrift store and seemed to have no shame about it; or even notice that there was something worth noticing about it.

 

It made Harry uncomfortable, looking at this girl and all too easily seeing where he came from.

 

“I never said I believed it.” Tom said but she waved this off as if it was unimportant, as if no one ever truly did believe it.

 

“The point is that sometimes weird shit happens for no apparent reason and you’re walking down the street one day and you find out that reality’s been rewritten so that you’re a guy, you have this weirdly good looking uncle you’ve never heard of, Quirrell didn’t supposedly kidnap you over Christmas, and you’re still somehow around anyway as both the new version of you and the old one.” She sighed giving them a very flat look, throwing her hands up into the air, “I think he’s finally done it, Rabbit finally ate Scotland... I always pictured the aftermath as being more abyss-like, this is strangely anticlimactic.”

 

Harry and Tom had the dual thought that neither of them had managed to follow any of that in any fashion. She in the meantime had taken to staring off into space, looking as if she was in deep thought, and Tom was struck by the fact that he had seen that expression before.

 

It was how Harry looked, when he and Harry were conversing, or when Harry was drifting further from himself. It was the look of introspection too deep to belong to any normal person, where if you looked within yourself you could just keep looking.

 

Something about that expression put him on edge.

 

“Right, Lily, so where are you from?” Harry asked and she turned raising her eyebrows towards him.

 

“I told you, I’m from here, I’m supposed to be you… only I’m not at the moment.” She said and the look of concentration only seemed to grow, her fingers tapping idly on the table, absentmindedly she reached for a biscuit but paid them no mind.

 

“What do you mean, you’re supposed to be me?”

 

Here she did glance at them, then motioned towards herself, “Eleanor Potter, girl who lived, savior of the wizarding United Kingdom and all around Wizard Jesus. Only, now I guess it’s the boy who lived…”

 

“No you’re…” Tom was about to scoff at her, clearly she was playing them, but then she raised her hair casually to reveal the same lightning bolt scar that was on Harry’s forehead.

 

Both he and Harry stared at her, and strangely enough they believed her, because she felt the same. She was sharper than Harry, a bit brighter, but it was the same feeling when she walked into a room. She burned and burned brighter still and her magic whispered old and forgotten things.

 

Only, how could that be possible?

 

Was she a doppelganger? An imperfect doppelganger that represented not death but some other ill omen? Or was she something else, something that had not been researched or recorded, was she something new and unheard of?

 

“I don’t understand it either.” She said breaking Tom’s musings as if this was a minor problem rather than something fundamental.

 

Harry was hard enough to grasp on his own, the idea of Harry didn’t correlate with anything Tom had ever learned, how was he supposed to accept two of them? And why here, why now? It was an insignificant day, the middle of summer, in Diagon Alley. There hadn’t been any bursts of light, magic, or anything to signal her arrival.

 

There had been nothing at all, she’d simply been there and he’d looked for her.

 

“I thought you said your name was Lily.” Harry said frowning slightly, seeming to accept what she was saying for now when Tom couldn’t.

 

“It is, Ellie Potter’s like my stage name. Surely you feel the same way about whatever your name is?”

 

“Harry, it’s Harry.” Harry said.

 

“Right, well you must have noticed that people have a lot of preconceived notions about Harry Potter, that Harry Potter is expected to do and say a lot of things, and that Harry Potter is… Well he’s an idea, and you’re not. So Harry Potter isn’t necessarily you just like Ellie Potter isn’t necessarily me.”

 

Hadn’t they had that thought far too often? The idea of the boy who lived that dehumanized every time it was spoken? The meeting with this girl was growing steadily more alarming by the minute but even as it did so Tom found himself being intrigued.

 

The girl, Ellie, no Lily, she wasn’t wrong in saying that she was Harry and not Harry. There were differences but there were also similarities and they were evident even in this one conversation. Harry was soft where she was sharp, she was casual while Harry was reserved, and yet their minds moved in much the same fashion only she was pragmatic while Harry was a philosopher at heart.

 

She had accepted the truths Harry sometimes pondered and she had chosen to move past them so that they now meant little to her.

 

“You felt that way too?” Harry asked, quietly, looking almost stricken.

 

“Well, yes, it’s hard not to.” She said looking mildly puzzled as if she didn’t know why Harry had even bothered to ask.

 

She then appeared to eye the pair of them for a moment, critically, and all humanity dripped from her expression. It was Harry at his worst, that moment with Quirrell when there had only been magic in his eyes, or rather they were Tom’s eyes then that dissected and drew apart without feeling.

 

Then the expression faded and resignation, a sadness that was far too old for her body, took its place.

 

“I don’t think I can put things back the way they were, more, I don’t know if I should. I don’t exist in this universe, I don’t need to, Harry Potter has neatly filled my place. I’m superfluous.” She grimaced, tasting that final word, coming to terms with it and she offered them both a grim smile.

 

She looked as if she was going to leave.

 

Harry stopped her before she could make any attempt to walk away or even apparate, “Wait, if you’re me then… You’re like my sister, right?”

 

And Tom saw then, what he saw when he looked at this strange girl, he saw someone who understood. More than Tom’s forced understanding through their shared thoughts, more than Hermione’s attempts to understand through shared experiences, this was someone who down in the depths of her soul knew him as well as she knew herself.

 

The idea of being alone, of solitude, had suddenly and dramatically been lifted because she was there and she had to understand.

 

“I guess, biologically.” The girl said, again looking somewhat put off by all of this.

 

“Then you should stay with us, me and my uncle I mean.” Harry said a wild grin growing on his face, “You don’t have anywhere to stay, right?”

 

“Well, no, probably not.” She said and appeared to think on his offer for a moment, her eyes growing distant for a moment, and finally she shrugged, “Sure, I mean, I guess I can stay with you. I mean, it’s not like there’s anywhere else I have to be since I’ve been written out of existence and everything. Damn Rabbit, I swear when I find him… Do you think one can regurgitate the United Kingdom?”

 

She didn’t blink twice at the books, even took to reading many of them along with Tom, and it soon seemed as if she’d never lived anywhere else. She adjusted quickly, to the cheap Thai food, to Tom’s side projects, and easily kept pace with either of them in a variety of subjects.

 

They found that she was just as talented as Harry in magic, that she had the same affinity for wandless magic, for control over the idea and the universe rather than the wand and simple spells. More than that, where Harry simply questioned why, she proposed theories.

 

Reality, she insisted, was breaking apart, and no one she had met seemed to realize it. They were either trapped too far in or too far outside of it, you had to exist somewhere in the middle, between reality and not-reality to notice the quirks.

 

Magic to her was not something she owned, or that existed within her, but was instead a part of the universe that she merely manipulated for her own benefit. She was the puppeteer and the world was her show, all she had to do was pull the right strings.

 

“I can’t say I’ve ever thought of it that way.” Tom admitted over Styrofoam containers of the cheapest Chinese food he could find.

 

She’d shrugged and then motioned to his work, “Well, your programming language idea’s pretty close. You’re trying to do the same thing I am just with a lot more syntax and things.”

 

She claimed that being Eleanor Potter wasn’t the same as being Eleanor Potter (and for Harry she made this same distinction), that you sort of went through the motions but when the day was over and no one was looking you didn’t continue to be Eleanor Potter.

 

She made a lot of claims which at first sounded rather alarming and ridiculous but were logically argued. He wasn’t sure he agreed, or even wanted to agree, with most or any of them but he could concede every once in a while that she had a point.

 

And sometimes he caught her staring at him, in a way he had never been stared at before, as if he was more a thing than a person. As if he was some puzzle she had not quite managed to figure out but one that demanded her attention.

 

Neither of them made any mention of these moments, at least, until Harry left for school in the fall.

 

Then, when it was him and her alone in the house, she asked the question he hadn’t even realized she knew, “Thomas Evans wasn’t your first name, was it?”

 

And there was that look, far too critical, and she didn’t even wait for him to answer as he stiffened, “How’d you do it?”

 

“Do what?”

 

“The body, how’d you and Harry get the body.” The look became more pensive, more internally frustrated, “What do you have, know, that we don’t?”

 

“The body?” Tom said looking down at himself, at the body of Thomas Evans, formed of Dudley Dursley’s dying breath.

 

“I like the hair by the way, not that I can picture Lenin going blonde, but you know…”

 

“Lenin?” He asked and she tapped her head, her scar, in response.

 

He didn’t understand, even as he stared across at her and once more tried to put together who this little girl really was, “Who are you?”

 

And he knew she’d said it before, he knew he’d felt this same way the first time, but dammit he was unnerved. She was not… She was not even remotely human, or if she was then it was less than he tolerated, less than Harry, perhaps even less than him.

 

There was a certain point where looking human, acting vaguely human, wasn’t good enough and she was fast approaching it if she wasn’t there already.

 

She sighed, as if he was being purposefully slow, “Come on, Tom, put it together. Where did you come from?” She asked with raised eyebrows, putting her hands on her hips.

 

And he knew she didn’t mean the unknown side of Harry’s family tree, she’d probably never believed he was Harry’s uncle in the first place. When their eyes had first met in the street, when he’d looked too long and too deep, had she known it then?

 

He liked her. He’d grown accustomed to this girl Lily, who looked too much like Harry Potter’s own mother. He’d grown accustomed to seeing her flipping through a book almost as large as she was with determination and focus that was almost uncanny, to her commentary on every film they rented and more, he’d gotten used to seeing her around.

 

There were times when he’d forgotten how uncanny she truly was.

 

And she was still waiting for his answer. And it was with a dry mouth that he settled on the truth that she already appeared to know, “A notebook.”

 

“Exactly a… Holy shit, what?” She said and then she trailed off her expression becoming very confused.

 

“A notebook?” She asked him, he didn’t respond only looked at her, wondering how she had appeared to know so much but hadn’t managed to pick up that fact. Where else did she think he’d come from?

 

She looked as if someone had just punched her though, “A notebook…”

 

Then something seemed to dawn on her and she looked him over again her eyes growing wide and leaning back slightly, “Wait, so you’re the other horcrux.”

 

“Who the bloody hell did you think I was?”

 

She threw her hands into the air fishing for some response, “Well, I, I don’t know I saw you with Harry and I assumed you were Rabbit-eaten version of Lenin but I guess not. Wait, how did you and Harry meet? I’ve never even met the other non-Rabbit-eaten version of the horcrux.”

 

“Who’s Lenin?” He asked matching her easily in confused frustration.

 

“The Tom Riddle, Voldemort, whatever horcrux in my brain… Well, Harry’s brain, whoever’s brain!”  She said her hands still flailing about for a reasonable explanation of why he was a different horcrux than the one she’d expected.

 

He sat in silence for a moment, taking in those words, and then in a tone that seemed to distant even to his own ears, “There’s a horcrux… in Harry’s brain?”

 

She blinked, “You mean you didn’t know?”

 

He shook his head, of course it wasn’t true, because such a thing had never been done before. Horcruxes were static containers anything else would be too volatile, would probably die with the magic of implantation, but then it was Harry… If anyone could survive such a process…

 

But Harry wasn’t a horcrux, didn’t have a horcrux in his head, it wasn’t only impossible it was also illogical. The dark lord would never place his soul in such an easily destroyed vessel, he would have to be mad…

 

The girl was staring at him, as if waiting for him to grasp something, “You really don’t know.”

 

“Harry isn’t a horcrux.” He said, shaking his head, smiling slightly.

 

“Oh I can tell you that he is.” She said shaking her head slowly, “He might not know it, the Lenin inside his head might not know it, but he definitely is.”

 

“How would you know?” He asked, brushing her insistence off far too casually considering how this conversation had been playing out thus far.

 

“Headaches, they aren’t as strong here, I think because you and him are… Well, a slightly tweaked version and much less angry. But I still get the headaches, and also you can just kind of tell, it’s somewhere in his pupils if you stare long enough. You see something other than Harry staring back.”

 

“That’s, that’s not me, that’s not a horcrux.” Tom said, “Although you’ve never told me how you knew I was a horcrux.”

 

“You walk the walk and you talk the talk, besides, look at your face.” She said pointing to his face, “You didn’t change that at all, just the hair, which I guess is enough for most people but come on man.”

 

Fair enough, although Severus Snape had not placed his former master, nor had Albus Dumbledore or all those other hidden men pouring over his paperwork and existence. Then again, they hadn’t been looking for him, and the girl for whatever reason had.

 

She’d been looking for him before their eyes had even met.

 

“Harry’s not a horcrux, he’s just… different.”

 

She looked unimpressed by this answer, “He can be different and have a horcrux, they’re not mutually exclusive.”

 

“But that doesn’t mean he’s a horcrux either.” He insisted.

 

She stared at him for a few moments, with narrowed eyes, and he wondered what move she might make next as if this was a game to convince him rather than a conversation. She appeared to decide that it was ultimately unimportant or else that he would find out for himself later because she shrugged.

 

“Whatever, so how’d you get a body then, to get out of the notebook?”

 

“That’s not a story I like to tell.” He said shortly and she nodded with wide eyes.

 

“That bad, huh?”

 

“Yes, that bad.” Not necessarily for him, no it had been too necessary to be bad, but there had been consequences to his actions. He would do it again, if he needed to, he would take a Dudley Dursely out of the world and replace him with something that had value but never the less there had been consequences.

 

And this was something for horcruxes to know, not for little girls.

 

“I can handle bad.” She said suddenly, insistent.

 

“It’s nothing you should have any interest in, you have a body, you don’t need another one.” He said, meaning to cut the conversation and retire to the bedroom so he could just sit down and think without having to look at her face.

 

He needed to reevaluate, think of what to do with this too powerful girl who knew far too much, he’d have to do something about her not to mention Dumbledore and Snape would be looking in any day now and would probably demand she be carted off to Hogwarts and spied on there.

 

She didn’t let him though.

 

She stood suddenly so that she was leaning over him, far too close, and power rolled off of her in cold waves, “It’s not for me, it’s for Lenin. You must understand you’re a horcrux, fifty years right, in that diary? Or close to it, you know that just waiting and watching isn’t good enough.”

 

“What are you talking about?”

 

“Lenin.” She said pointing to her scar again and leaning in closer again so that there was nothing but the cold green of her eyes, “Eleven years might not be as long as fifty but it’s a lot.”

 

He wanted to respond that there wasn’t a horcrux in her head, that she was mistaken, but then he saw it. Somehow he saw it, looking in her eyes, somewhere deep in her pupils he saw a fragment of something similar to himself staring back coldly.

 

“How is that… That shouldn’t even be possible.” He said breathlessly and again she seemed rather unimpressed by this, as if making statements like that were essentially meaningless.

 

“How’d you do it? A philosopher’s stone, a golem, an android, or was it some ancient dark ritual thing?” She said guessing and poking at him with one hand, as if to discover whether he was formed of river stones, of wires, or of magic itself.

 

“No, I…” He said moving away from her hand and then pushing it from him, his eyes grew cold then, “If he is a horcrux then he should already know the hows and the whys; it is instinct for us. I couldn’t explain it even if I tried.”

 

“So… even this just is then.” She said softly, sadly, she leaned backwards away from him until she was just standing there in front of him, looking like she’d been dismantled.

 

He had nothing to say to that, and when he made to stand she let him pass, her eyes blank and distant as if retreating inside her head once again. He did not say goodnight, only looked back at her one more time as he reached the bedroom door, a solitary figure standing before the television, with eyes unseeing.

 

And then, softly, quietly, he closed the door behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a 100th review fic at some point asking for a crossover of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (the fanfic) and "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus". 
> 
> Thanks for reading, comments, kudos, and bookmarks are greatly appreciated.


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